Anti-abortion Christian protesters in Norfolk, Virginia complained after a local clinic drowned out their attempt to harangue patients by playing audio from a popular science blogger’s book promoting atheism, Christian News reported.

“It’s opposition to the gospel,” said one demonstrator Jason Sleichter of the tactics used by Tidewater Women’s and LGBT Primary Care.

Video shot outside the clinic shows a speaker outside the building blaring audio from an audiobook for The Happy Atheist, published in 2013 by PZ Myers.

“We are apes and the descendants of apes,” the speaker says. “We’re the descendants of rat-like primates, who were the children of reptiles, who were the spawn of amphibians, who were the terrestrial progeny of fish, who came from worms, who were assembled from single-cell microorganisms, who were the products of chemistry. Your daddy was a film of chemical slime on a Hadean rock and he didn’t care about you; he was only obeying the laws of thermodynamics.”

Demonstrators fretted that the recording was played loudly enough to disrupt their attempts to “minister” to women seeking treatment at the clinic.

“We were telling them that their baby was made in the image of God, and what was going on that day was that God’s image was being destroyed,” said Don Karns, who shot the footage.

However, Myers stated on his blog Pharyngula that Sleichter’s group misidentified him as the speaker in the recording, when in reality it was atheism activist L. Aron Nelson, better known as Aron Ra.

“Much as I appreciate the attention and the anger of Christians, dont blare my words at women just looking for care,” Myers wrote. “It’s not appropriate and is counterproductive.”

About the Author

Arturo R. García is the managing editor at Racialicious.com. He is based in San Diego, California and has written for both print and broadcast media, including contributions to GlobalComment.com, The Root and Comment Is Free. Follow him on Twitter at @ABoyNamedArt